Mylapore Temple Bazaar, Chennai

There are two kinds of people – those who hate chennai and those who love chennai. The ones who love chennai will always continue to love chennai, no matter where life takes them. As one of our friends put it: “It is only in chennai that you will meet an elderly mami (Tamil word for ‘aunty’) at a wedding, dressed in her traditional nine yard pattu (silk) saree, whom you begin to make conversation with, expecting the talk to revolve around the home and the hearth when you hear her wax eloquent about the latest happenings at Princeton and suddenly your own knowledge about matters of the world seem so limited. That kind of sums up what we like so much about Chennai – a globally aware metropolis where traditional customs are still followed and much of their meaning understood.

In Chennai, you come across a temple or a shrine ever so often as you walk along the streets, especially in Royapettah, Mylapore, Triplicane and the other older parts of the city. The city has two large temples, one at Mylapore – the Kapaleeswarar Temple, and the other at Triplicane – the Parthasarathy temple. Both the temples are enveloped by bazaars.

The Bazaar at Mylapore is primarily the four streets that border the temple and its tank. During festivals, these four traditional Mada streets that encircle the temple burst with people and celebration as the huge wooden temple car housing the idols is taken around the temple. 

In his book 'Madras Rediscovered' the historian, S.Muthiah notes that the Mylapore temple was on the shores in the 15th century and part of the great port of the Pallava Kings who bore the title Mylai Kavalar (Protectors of Mylapore). Meaning ‘Town of Peacocks’, Mylapore derives its name from a legend now depicted in one of the idols housed within the temple, where the Goddess Parvathi, the consort of Shiva, is shown worshipping him in the body of a peacock.

As you begin to walk along the North Mada street, you find shops that sell clothes for the deity. There is the Shree Sathyanarayana Silks – a Wholesale and Retail shop established in 1973 for Handloom Lace, Pure Silk sarees, Cotton sarees, Dhoties, etc. This is also the street that has the shops selling Temple Jewellery, which are worth a visit.
  
Earlier, the jewellery was all hand-made whereas today it is mass-produced. There are thousands of designs that have been carried on through generations of master artisans. They are now codified and each design has a name. The 'Radha Gold Jewellers' has 120 artisans working in silver and gold. The shop gets several orders from the Kalakshetra dance school, which was established by Rukmini Devi Arundale in Chennai and from well-known dancers all over South India.

Then, there are stores that sell Brass and Copper Pooja articles, Handicrafts, Gift articles and Devotional Decoration articles. These shops occupy some of the charming old vernacular houses that still exist in Mylapore, with their country tile roofs and their lime-plastered walls. The items for sale are displayed in the small rooms of the house and you pick up gifts for friends and family as you walk through the house with the salespeople being there when you need them.

At the entrance to the street leading to the east gate of the Temple and occupying a prominent corner is the Ambica Appalam Depot. It is actually 65 years old but in its current location since 12 years. When it first started on Madha Narayana Street, it sold primarily appalam and sambhar powder. Today, it sells all groceries and includes products such as Betel nut powder, Ginger sweets, Groundnut rounds, Idli Dosai chilly powder and the Payasam mix. There is a smaller outlet of Ambica Appalam also on the R.K.Mutt road.

There are shelves and shelves of ambica products such as the Lemon Rice paste, the Tomato Thokku, the Curry Leaf Rice paste, the Tiffin Sambhar paste, the Puliyodharai Rice paste and the Vathakuzhambu paste. You can also buy the MTR sambhar powder and Sri Ganeshram’s 777 brand of sambhar powder here. All of this makes Ambica Appalam a special place for those who miss what their mothers and grandmothers made ever so lovingly at home!

Facing the East entrance of the Temple is a small lane, which houses the well-known music shop – GIRI stores. This place is so special because you can find here recitations from the Gita, Carnatic Classical Vocal, Tamil discourses, Epic T.V.serials, Hindustani Classical and lots more. There is also music from Tamil films and Malayam songs.

There is Sanskrit devotional music that includes Sacred Vedic chanting, Veda Vahini, Chalisa, Shiva Stuti, Gayatri Mantram, Suprabhatam, MahaShivrathri puja, Shrimad Bhagvad Gita and the Lalitha Sahasranama Stothram. As you walk into the three-storeyed shop, there is devotional music playing in the background and pictures of Dr.Chitti Babu (Veena), Bombay S.Jayashri (Vocal), D.K.Pattamal (Vocal), Neela & Kunjumani (Flute), Prasanna (Guitar) and Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan (Violin).

On South Mada street, you will see and smell coffee shops and more coffee shops!! There is the P.R.K.Nadar Sons who are wholesale merchants for coffee. There is the Leo Coffee shop, which is where we always bought our daily dose of “Houseblend” when we lived in Chennai some years ago. Further down the same road, there is the ‘Brahmalaya’s Kumbakonam Degree’ coffee. Then, there is the simple outlet ‘Sobana Tea and Coffee bar’ and the contemporary Café Coffee day as well.

The west entrance to the temple abuts the temple tank and the street is lined by flower sellers, a fortune teller and vendors selling stickers with kolam designs. Further west, on R.K.Mutt road is a house that is simple looking but prominent in the history of Mylapore. This is the 'Samaithu Par' house that belonged to Meenakshi Ammal who is well-known for her three-volume book series 'Cook and See' which was first publised in 1951. It was written at that time for the young bride with advice on how to make the perfect coffee decoction and with recipes for adais and dosais and guidelines for how to manage a wedding function in your family!

To the west of the tank is the famous Ramakrishna Mutt, on R.K.mutt road. Further north on this road are shops that sell musical instruments such as the violin and the veena. There are people who come from all over South India for purchase or repair of their instruments here. 

What we also loved when we lived in Chennai for three years, were the neighbourhood newspapers that provided so much local news. There is the Mylapore Times - a free, English weekly that covers news about Mylapore, Alwarpet, Santhome and R.A.Puram. Every year, in the month of January, there is the 4-day Mylapore Festival with its dance recitals, its storytelling, its Rickshaw tours, Temple tours and its kolam competitions!

The Mylapore temple bazaar has also come to be a place where the women of the music-loving city of madras, shop for their silk sarees. For sarees, there is the famous Raasi silks, which is the biggest in this part of Chennai. This is opposite the Karpagambal Mess, a place to visit for idlis and dosas when you are here. It is especially well-frequented in the Kutcheri months (Music season) in December/ January when the Gana Sabhas (music halls) in the Mylapore region are overflowing with ardent music lovers. You have just listened to Bombay Jayashree or Aruna Sairam sing at the Mylapore Fine Arts Society and then you come by here for a tiffin (snack) and a filter coffee which is an apt end to the blissful day.

On the food front, there is also the Vasantha Bhavan on South Mada and the Saravana Bhavan on the North Mada Street. What you don’t want to miss at Saravana’s is their natural icecreams - including flavours such as tender coconut, jackfruit and panchamrutam! Near Mylapore are also the Luz Church and the Santhome Cathedral, which was part of an old Portuguese settlement of the 16^th century - also worth a visit while you are at this most exciting temple bazaars of South India. If you want to get to know the real chennai this is the place to begin!

Other Bazaar tours in India :
Bazaar Tour 1 : Dadar Flower Market, Mumbai
Bazaar Tour 2 : Antique market, Mumbai
Bazaar Tour 3 : Varkala, Kerala
Bazaar Tour 4 : Gandhi Bazaar, Bangalore

Market streets of Tiruvannamalai

Tiruvannamalai is a temple town in Tamil Nadu, situated 185 km from Chennai and 210 km from Bangalore. It is known for its centuries old Arunachaleswara Temple and for the Ramanashram, where Ramana Maharishi lived for many years after his sixteen years of deep meditation on the Arunachala hill. There is known to be a connection between Arunachala and Machu Picchu in Peru, both being along the axis of spiritual power.

There is so much about Tiruvannamalai that makes it belong to all those who have revered the Maharishi and worshipped the Shiva linga at the temple here. There are shops within the temple, shops along the temple street and shops all over the temple town. However, it is when you walk into the main bazaar streets in the centre of town that you realise that there is so much life also outside the silence of the ashram and the ritual of the temple.

As always, there is so much to see and so much to absorb. As much as you know that on a less busy time in the bazaar, you would be noticed immediately as being an outsider, this is not a day anyone pays attention to another passer-by. I move through the bazaar in perfect bliss – unnoticed and uninterrupted. There are enough customers to bother about without the vendors trying to catch the eye of an uninterested one. It is nearing the end of the day and business has to be brisk and good.

This bazaar has narrow streets that are crowded with goods and with people. In a few streets, there are vegetable vendors along the centre with people moving in aisles on both sides. In other streets, there are jute bags filled with whole red chillis, pulses and bags of rice. The shops that sell gold jewellery seem to be overflowing with people. Are these the pilgrims who are in the town for religious workship and a family outing combined with it?

The Bazaar is populated with the locals at the vegetable and grocery shops nad with pilgrims at the jewellery shops. As we learn from a young man who owns an Internet café in Tiruvannamalai, amongst the many foreigners who come here, there are ashramites, there are “tourists” and there are “travellers”. The tourists are those who are keen on a good holiday and will spend any amount for a room in the town, as they would in Goa or Pondicherry. There are the travellers who are careful with how much they spend and who want their money to last a long time. There are no tourists and no travellers at the Bazaar today. It is perhaps not a place they frequent so much. Besides, it is “off-season” in Tiruvannamalai, as many shop-owners on ashram road had pointed out earlier in the day.

It is that time of the year when many foreigners who have made the town their home go away for a month or more to their families in the countries they have come from. But, nothing about this bazaar would tell you anything about the presence of an ashram in the town or the tourists and the travellers. This could be a bazaar anywhere, in an interior part of Theni district or in Madurai district. It is the typical bazaar of a town in Tamil Nadu.

The market streets spread out in many directions, well, actually only four directions – North to South and West to East. The sun is setting over the west gopuram of the Arunachaleswara temple. You can see the Arunachala hill beyond and for a moment, it is so captivating a sight that it is the bazaar that seems more like that passing landscape through the window of a train compartment, a far away destination being all important.

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Bazaars within an Indian temple
Bazaar on a Temple street
Bazaar in a Temple Town